Following in Greta Garbo's footsteps, Malin Buska stars as Queen Kristina in The Girl King
- The Yellow Affair starts pre-sales of Mika Kaurismäki’s new historical biopic of 17th-century Swedish Queen Kristina in Berlin
“The Girl King [+see also:
trailer
film profile] is not intended as a traditional costume epic, but as a psychological human story of a revolutionary thinker, a connoisseur of art and science, a precursor to the feminist movement, a strong and visionary politician, a new European,” said Finnish director Mika Kaurismäki, who is currently shooting a new historical biopic of 17th-century Swedish Queen Kristina, who ruled from the age of seven until her abdication at 28.
US director Rouben Mamoulian portrayed her in his 1933 classic Queen Christina, with Greta Garbo in the lead. Now, at the European Film Market, Finnish-Swedish international sales agency The Yellow Affair has started pre-sales of Kaurismäki’s €6.5 million updated version, with Swedish actress Malin Buska in the title role.
Scripted by award-winning Canadian writer Michel Marc Bouchard, The Girl King will be filmed in Finland, Sweden and Germany, and will be produced by Kaurismäki for his own Finnish firm Marianna Films, with Triptych Media, Galafilm (Canada), Germany’s Starhaus Filmproduktion and Sweden’s Anagram.
Co-starring Sarah Gadon, Michael Nyqvist, Lucas Bryant, Laura Birn and Hippolyte Girardot, Kaurismäki’s updated depictionofQueen Kristina follows the young queen as she is thrust into a world of conflict. After falling madly in love with her lady in waiting, she is pushed towards making one of the most scandalous decisions in history: the daughter of a Protestant champion of the Thirty Years’ War, she abdicated and converted to Roman Catholicism in 1654.
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